Improvement of Agreement in TCM Diagnosis Among TCM Practitioners for Persons with the Conventional Diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis: Effect of Training

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Abstract
Objective: To investigate whether a training process that focused on consensus on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) diagnostic criteria will improve the agreement of TCM diagnosis on patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Design: The design was a prospective survey. Setting: The study was conducted at the General Clinical Research Center, University of Maryland Hospital System, Baltimore, MD. Subjects: The participants were 42 patients with RA. Practitioners: The practitioners included 3 licensed acupuncturists with a minimum of 5 years' licensure and education in Chinese herbs. Methods: A training session of TCM diagnostic procedures was conducted with an open case discussion and “real time” practice. After the training, 3 TCM practitioners examined the same 42 patients with RA separately. Patients filled out a questionnaire to serve as the data for the “Inquiry” component while physical examinations, including observations of tongue and palpation of radial pulse, were conducted by the 3 practitioners. Each practitioner provided a TCM diagnosis based upon the examination results. These diagnoses were then examined with respect to the rate of agreement among the 3 practitioners. Results: The average agreement with respect to the TCM diagnoses among the 3 pairs of TCM practitioners was 73% (64.3%–85.7%). Statistically significant differences were found between this study and the two previous studies (p < 0.001). Conclusions: After training focused on consensus on TCM diagnostic criteria, we found that these 3 same TCM practitioners who were used in phase II of the study produced a significantly higher agreement when compared to study phase I or phase II. Our study suggests that improved consensus on TCM diagnostic criteria results in increased agreement of diagnosis.

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